Arabian Sands
Cover of the first British edition, published by Longmans 1959
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| Author | Wilfred Thesiger |
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| Language | English |
| Genre | Travel writing |
| Publisher | Longmans, London |
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Publication date
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1959 |
| Media type | Hardback & Paperback |
| Pages | 330 pages |
| ISBN | |
Arabian Sands is a 1959 book by explorer and travel writer Wilfred Thesiger. The book focuses on the author's travels across the Empty Quarter of the Arabian Peninsula between 1945 and 1950. It attempted to capture the lives of the Bedu people and other inhabitants of the Arabian peninsula. It is considered a classic of travel literature.
The book largely reflects on the changes and large scale development that took place after the Second World War and the subsequent gradual erosion of traditional Bedouin ways of life that had previously existed unaltered for thousands of years.
Wilfred Thesiger was born into a privileged English background, the son of a diplomat, educated at Eton and Oxford. As soon as he could, on his first summer holiday at university, he travelled to Istanbul, going out by tramp steamer, back by train: the first of many adventurous journeys. At age 23 he went on his first exploration, of the Awash River in Abyssinia (now Ethiopia). He became a colonial officer in Sudan, working in the desert region of Darfur and then the swampy Sudd, where he was responsible for shooting lions. While in Darfur he journeyed with local people by camel and visited the Tibesti mountains in the Sahara. In the Second World War he fought to liberate Abyssinia under the eccentric but charismatic Orde Wingate, and in the Special Air Service behind enemy lines in the Western Desert of north Africa. After the war he joined the anti-locust unit of the Food and Agriculture Organisation, taking the chance between 1945 and 1949 to travel in the Empty Quarter of Arabia. Arabian Sands describes his two crossings of that region.
Thesiger begins his Introduction by saying that if he had thought of writing a book about his journeys, he "should have kept fuller notes which now would have both helped and hindered me". He did however keep some kind of diary of his travels, later polishing his notes in letters to his mother, and then (years later) writing up his books from those. His two Arabian journeys described here took place between 1946 and 1948; the book appeared in 1959.
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